


It's about Phil

by crazed_peanut



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot, Reality, hurt!phil, left to you to decide, maybe not, maybe platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 19:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6436537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazed_peanut/pseuds/crazed_peanut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on Phil's liveshow on the 13th of March where Dan was being loud in the background and Phil gets angry with him afterwards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's about Phil

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome!  
> The events and characters in this story are a figment of my imagination.

By the time Dan wakes, Phil’s already fully dressed, finishing his coffee in the lounge. He drags himself lazily over to the couch and plops down, muttering a “good morning”. Admittedly, Dan should have known something was wrong the moment Phil doesn’t greet him, instead walking out and, without uttering a single word, leaving the apartment. Phil would later blame Dan that he’s not paying enough attention to him, and Dan won’t be so sure Phil’s wrong. Currently, however, at 9 in the morning, Dan is blissfully unaware of all of this.

He hears the distinct noise of the front door being unlocked and wonders if it's really been that long, that Phil’s already back from tour rehearsal. A quick glance at the clock tell him that, yes, he didn't move from the couch for 6 hours.

“Hey, Phil” he greets, as Phil walks straight past the lounge and in the kitchen. He's not spared even a glance, let alone a few words and that's finally when he figures out something is wrong.

As if electricity shoots down Dan's body at the sudden realization and he follows the other man.

“Phil, what's going on?” Phil just continues to stare at his mug, a couple of spoonfuls of instant coffee already at the bottom of it, waiting to be dissolved in the water Phil’s currently boiling. The kettle beeps and Phil reaches for it, his movements sharp, telling Dan that Phil wants to be done as soon as possible and turn his back to him, so he grabs Phil’s wrist mid-air.

“What, now I can't even make coffee?” Those are the first words Phil’s said to him in over a day.

 “Not until you tell me what the fucks gotten into you today.” Dan hears himself get angry, though he probably doesn’t have the right to be. Phil’s not the type of person to hold a grudge over nothing and Dan’s sure he’s never seen him more…angry, hurt? He can’t tell.

“Let go of my arm, Dan” Phil stares at it as if he’s been burned.

“Tell me why you're cross with me.” Dan insists.

 

At that moment Phil looks at him angrily, with his lips pulled together and that makes Dan feel small, like his mother has just scolded him for a bad thing he did and he consciously has to fight the urge to say sorry. He wouldn’t even know what he'd be apologizing for, and Phil’s stare is decidedly the "you know what you did" one. Dan doesn’t let up though and keeps his grip on Phil’s arm and now they’re almost having a staring contest.

“You’re acting like a child, Dan.”

“Oh, am I now? So I guess being an adult means avoiding a problem and expecting your friend to just know what they did wrong?”

“Fine, since you’re so hell bent on us having this fight. What were you doing yesterday while I was having my liveshow?”

Dan has to think for a second. What _had_  he been doing? He remembers playing Guild wars and then talking on the phone with a friend. It doesn’t really matter if Dan can’t remember though, because apparently Phil isn’t even expecting an answer, he just speaks on, voice raised.

“Want me to tell you? You were being loud! So loud in fact that all 12 thousand of the viewers could hear you throughout the whole show and they made sure I knew it.”

“You could have texted me to stop. I didn’t realize.”

“Don’t you remember that I came into the office looking for my phone and I told you it only had 4% battery left, or did you just care enough to listen to me while I talk to you?”

Dan didn’t remember. “Oh”

“Yes, oh. Now excuse me, but I have a video to edit.”

Dan knows he isn’t getting the whole picture though. Sure, he was probably annoying Phil, but it wasn’t the first time that had happened. Generally, Phil was pretty good at letting things like that go. There’s something he wasn’t telling him.

“No, Phil, wait. I’m sorry I bothered you, but why is this suddenly such a big deal? Did you end up telling them something weird when they asked?”

“I didn’t tell them anything. I wanted to get through one live show where it wasn’t about you. I wanted my followers to enjoy _me_  and _my_  broadcast, because not everything in my life is about you.”

Finally Dan gets it. To be fair to him, it isn’t common at all for Phil to act like this. He is generally a person with good self-esteem (way better than Dan’s anyway), who does his own thing and doesn’t pay attention to followers comparing him to Dan, or asking about him, because he’s confident enough in his individual brand.

When the first shift in popularity had happened, they hit a rough patch in their relationship. Dan’s subscriber boost was so sudden, they didn’t even have time to discuss how it made them both feel, which resulted in tension, a lot of fighting, and the first and only time Phil ever said “You wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me”. They both knew that was the truth, but Phil had never played that card before, or ever again. The people who found Phil through Dan multiplied, but the other way around seem to happen less frequently. A few weeks passed and Dan figured out Phil was just scared of losing relatability, hence his job, and it became obvious to Phil that Dan didn’t know what to do with the influence and responsibility he now had. So they made the conscious effort to keep the power dynamic in their personas and private interactions completely separate. It hadn’t come up again in the 4 years since then.

“Phil, we’ve talked about this, remember? We created a new brand for the both of us and we knew what was going to happen. We’re a duo now and we get recognized as one, some people are going to have a hard time watching you without me or me without you. Do you regret this? Because I wish I could tell you we can go back to danisnotonfire and AmazingPhil easily, but I’m afraid I might lie.” Dan is trying not to sound preachy. It’s not like Phil could have forgotten this.

“No, I don’t regret it. It’s a good business decision.”

“Is that all this is to you? A business plan? I thought you were excited about us creating something as a team.”

“I am, I’ve just been thinking about what projects I could take up on my own, but…”

“But, what, Phil? I don’t see the problem here. I did the Supergamers documentary, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, and how did that work out? How many times did our followers ask you why I wasn’t a co-host? You went and did your own thing and I bet you a lot of them watched it just because they thought I’d have a sneaky cameo somewhere.”

“You’re not being fair here, Phil. Not to me, not to them. I did what was expected of me- how our followers took it and interpreted it is their problem and out of our control. Besides, you’re focusing on the core phandome here, which is what? 20 thousand people? 50 thousand? You and I both know a lot more watch our videos. You don’t work for just those 50 thousand viewers. I’m sure that the majority of people that get excited about your projects don’t care about “phan” or the drama. It’s just that the other part is more vocal.”

“You’re lecturing me like I don’t already know all this, Dan, so stop it.”

Dan opens his mouth to protest, but Phil shuts him down with a hand gesture.

“I’m going to figure this out, Dan, so just drop it, okay?”

And Dan does, at least for the day. He tries not to take it personally, but it hurts him that Phil shut him out like that. It has been a while since either of them had made a professional decision without consulting the other and Dan feared Phil would come and present him with a solution, which he would not like one bit. It was all coming out of left field anyway for Dan, and he ends up feeling uneasy.

The feeling haunts Dan for the next 2 days, settles in even stronger when they day for filming Undertale comes and goes and Phil reschedules it. The stark contrast between both men’s coping techniques makes the atmosphere at breakfast 3 days later unbearably tense for Dan. They’re both quiet, though Dan doesn’t want to be and he squirms in his place on the sofa. He can’t focus on the anime, because all his thoughts are “can we talk about this?”, “why aren’t we discussing this”, “let me help you”, “I want to tell you how I feel”. Eventually he takes his cereal and shuts himself in his room, angry at how Phil’s handling this, though he knows he shouldn’t be.  

A couple of hours later it’s almost supper and there’s a soft knock on Dan’s door, (he can’t even remember the last time Phil knocked before coming in) and he opens it. Phil takes his usual place at the foot of the bed and Dan turns from his desk to face him. Phil speaks and he sounds subdued, unsure, nothing like he usually is.

“Tell me what you think I should do. I know you’ve thought about it.”

“You’re right, I have. So here’s the deal. I know you don’t want to call the whole DanAndPhil tour and brand off. I’m sure the BBC have some project lined up for a presenter like you. But you were right about my documentary- I didn’t like our viewers asking about you constantly either, so taking up something similar is going to churn out the same results. Have you thought seriously about more voice acting?”

Phil nods. Dan talks slowly, because he knows it’s a good idea, also not a far reach, he’s not nervous presenting Phil with it.  

“You’re a great voice actor and I know you enjoy it immensely. How about you take up more jobs like that? They’d let you focus on the work and it won’t have anything to do with me or AmazingPhil. It doesn’t have to be something big, maybe little cameos. You could talk to our management, we could pull some strings.”

“Honestly, I’ve been thinking the same. I want to voice a video game character. Is that stupid? Is it too much?”

“Why would it be too much? You’re an ambitious guy, Phil. I’ve seen you execute the craziest ideas and this one’s definitely possible.”

“Ambitious? Don’t you mean stubborn?” Phil huffs out a laugh after this and Dan finally eases in his chair and smiles.

“Yeah, maybe. You get shit done, that’s what’s important.”

“Thanks. Sorry for shouting at you the other day. I was completely out of line.”

“That’s okay.” And it really is for Dan. Usually he’s the insecure one, the indecisive one, the procrastinator, the one that needs to hear a motivational speech. This feels different, but also good, like he finally has something to give back to Phil. For once, it feels like he’s the friend he’s always wanted to be.

It hurts just for a second when Phil says he has a meeting with management _alone_  in a week, and then Dan smiles to himself, because it doesn’t even matter. They’re still a team.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> Writing phanfics is my coping mechanism, so I'll keep posting them even if they're not good or original.  
> Please stop by in the comments and hit the kudos if you like this!  
> Also, check out my other works here, since I don't have a tumblr!
> 
> I'm not sure this turned out as good as I expected it. I tried to keep the subject of their relationship status out of the story, because as it says in my work, it's not about that at all. Also, I wanted to challenge myself to write something that's not explicitly "established relationship".


End file.
